If you were waiting breathlessly for policy details on Social Security and Medicare from Jeb! Bush (beyond
his endorsement of his brother's disastrous Social Security privatization scheme, or how much he wants to
"phase out" Medicare) here you go. While it's pretty weak on actual specifics, Jeb! has released his
plan to "Preserve, Protect and Reform Medicare and Social Security." In other words, how he'll privatize Social Security and phase out Medicare under the usual Republican guise of "protecting" them.
He begins with the premise:
If we do not have an honest conversation about what it will take to protect Medicare and Social Security, we fail seniors and we will fail the next generation of Americans.
And then he proceeds to present some very dishonest ideas about the programs. Like how "they consume almost half of all federal spending and crowd out other national priorities." Hear that, old people? It's all your fault we can't have nice things. He's got a plan for that, and for you. Actually, he just borrows from lots of other Republican plans. Like turning Medicare in a voucher scheme, that hugely unpopular proposal that's the gateway to privatizing the program. He'd also increase cost-sharing for wealthier recipients (how much wealthier? Of course, he doesn't say) but everyone could have their Health Savings Accounts to make up for it. Except for the part about how they will possibly afford to save any money in an HSA when they're paying more for their health care. Details, details.
What about Social Security? "First," Jeb! says—FIRST—"I’ll encourage private saving to reduce dependency on the government." Yeah, I bet he will, knowing how much he liked his brother's plan to privatize the program. He goes one better, saying he'll "stop the Obama Administration's proposed regulations to limit consumers' choice of financial advisors and drive up the costs of private saving." Actually, what those proposed regulations propose is the radical idea to "require some financial advisors to act as what the law calls fiduciaries for their clients," and "require them to put the client's interests ahead of other factors, such as their own compensation or company profits, when recommending or selling investments." So it's pretty clear whose side Jeb! is on here.
Privatizing isn't enough, though, so we get another lie from Jeb! "Second, we need to recognize that Americans are living longer, healthier lives, and we should make it easier for those who choose to work longer." Some Americans, the ones who are mostly white, well educated, and mostly wealthy, are living longer and are more healthy. Everyone else is not. But only the people like Jeb! count, so everyone will have to have wait longer to retire. (We knew this already from previous Jeb! statements. We also know that he didn't know that the retirement age has already been raised, and that he thinks it's fine for people to still be working at 70.) Add in some means testing (you get less money if you earned more—killing the guiding premise of the program that you get out what you put in) and "implementing reform proposals to slow the growth of costs" and you've got a looming disaster for Americans who ever hope to be able to retire.